


Five Months Three Weeks Six Days

by FireflySong



Category: Outlast (Video Games), Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Multi, Rough Kissing, Separations, but trust me, feels weird to tag this teen, if i ever do write out this au from start to finish, if not an explicit, it would SO be getting an m rating, nothing super super bad actually happens cause all the really bad stuff was brushed over, oh man how do i even tag this?, separation anxiety being formed in the worst possible way, so bad in fact that being apart literally turns them into shells of their former selves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27911707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflySong/pseuds/FireflySong
Summary: Chris, Josh, and Ashley have been shut away in Mount Massive Asylum for the Criminally Insane for over six months now. And for 176 of those days, they had been denied ever seeing each other. And well, the Morphogenic Engine births all kinds of things in its victims...
Relationships: Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley/Josh Washington
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11





	Five Months Three Weeks Six Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fudgeroach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fudgeroach/gifts).



> So. This is just a little different then the stuff I usually write huh? Long story short, decided to replay Outlast during Halloween, and the bug bit and just latched the fuck onto climbing chrash to just make a really twisted Outlast AU that I've been absolutely obsessed with ever since. And for some reason, fudgeroach decided he wanted to see more of it and requested it as part of the kiss prompts I was filling out, specifically for a 'hiding/hoping not to be caught kiss'.
> 
> (And obviously, I am ignoring vast amounts of game lore for this to work. Namely everything to do with the female Variants, or the lack thereof, and the false pregnancies and hemorrhaging that the Walrider causes in them. Because this is my au and I will cut and trim and paste what I damn well please, thank you very much.)

Five months, three weeks, and six days. Five months. Three weeks. And six days. The three of them had last been in the same room together five months, three weeks, and six days ago. One hundred and seventy-six total days, and they had learned to savour every second-long glance they could manage in narrow hallways and spotted through windows across the courtyard ever since.

Four months, one week, and two days ago marked the day that Josh had heard Ashley’s voice for the first time since they had been forcefully separated. It had been weak—an echo so faint that he was convinced at first that he had just imagined it—but after going nearly forty-eight days unable to talk when they used to never go more then _two_ , the two of them had latched onto it all the same.

Thirteen days later, Chris’s confused and hopeful voice finally joined the two of theirs. Ashley had been so overcome with their combined relief and the overwhelming realization that they could finally at least _talk_ to each other again, that her sobbing had almost gotten them caught right away. Three months, three weeks, and three days ago they were allowed to be together at least like this.

Two months since the day Josh had discovered Chris’s face looking back at him in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. Discovering that they could _see_ what the others did as well. The amount of time they all spent staring into mirrors with _that_ revelation probably wasn’t the first hint that the Morphogenic Engine had finally birthed something in them, but it was likely the most damning. They had hoped that the doctors would just assume this to be nothing more then a case of exceptional narcissism planted in them—just as cannibalism and violence had been seeded and then grown, nurtured, and pruned in the others—but luck was not on their side (not that it had ever been in this place). It didn’t matter. They were so desperate to even just _look_ at each others faces—tired, worn down, and abused as they all were—that they would accept any consequences that would come from this.

And consequences there were. 

One month and three days ago, after the tests and ‘therapy sessions' had only become longer and more frequent, the next pathological birthing revealed itself. It seemed that not only were they of one mind and eyes, but now their _bodies_ were connected as well. A wound delivered to one of them would be felt just as terribly by the others with no mark to mar their skin.

The last month had been spent with even more work put into making sure they were kept apart, housing each of them in different areas of the asylum so they would never be allowed catch even a glimpse of the others again. Believing that this separation would only exacerbate the trauma of not being allowed to contact the others, except through the use of their new ‘gifts’ of course. Well, it certainly exacerbated the discovery that this new connection of theirs meant that they were now connected in more ways then one. The further the distances between them, the less of themselves they became. 

Josh felt unable to speak, his tongue fat and useless in a mouth full of cotton. Chris swearing that he had been submerged and forced to move in a room of syrup, and his hands too shaky to hold onto anything larger then a penny. And Ashley’s poor brain filled with fog and running on Novocaine all at once, unable to string the words or thoughts together that she had loved oh so much.

Up until two days ago, there had been discussions between doctors and scientists that more tests might reveal _more_ connections; taste, smell, and true hearing being added to the sensations they all now shared—until they were molded into not three individuals, but a single being that had been slowly stripped away and ripped apart into three bloody pieces of the same heart. But decisions were made, and it was agreed upon that the three of them were to be prepped and connected to the Morphogenic Engine together. The three of them had become so intertwined after all, that maybe having all three of them hooked to the Engine at once would cause them not only to share the same lucid dreaming state, but enter the same lateral ascension needed to become host to the Walrider.

The first time the three of them would be together in the _same room_ in five months, three weeks, and six days. And they wouldn’t even be awake for it. 

And a day ago—informed that they should be honoured to have finally reached this important milestone in Project Walrider—all three of them had requested, begged, _pleaded_ that they be allowed to spend even _ten minutes_ together again beforehand. And each of the doctors sent to talk to them had rolled their eyes and simply stated that they were under no positions to be making demands. But, seeing as they had been such good and educational guinea pigs, they would _maybe_ consider it.

They would never know what the final answer would be, because a little over two hours ago good old Billy Hope had reached lateral ascension and everything went to shit.

And now, they had all managed to escape the rooms that had been holding them apart from each other—Ash and Chris from their rooms in the Female and Male Wards respectively, and Josh from his cell in the Prison Block—and were in the process navigating the maze that Mount Massive Asylum was quickly becoming. And with blood caked between their toes, screams of the dying—patients and staff alike—echoing down every hall and in every room, and the taste of freedom becoming stronger with every step closer they got to each other, they didn’t have time to be doing this. 

They _shouldn’t_ be doing this. Both of them knew that they shouldn’t be doing this. Hell, technically all _three_ of them knew that they shouldn’t be doing this. But well, it had been five months, three weeks, and six days since the three of them had been in the same room. So as Josh had shoved Chris up against the wall in one of the little alcoves in the Male Ward’s basement to make up for all one hundred and seventy-six days apart, everybody else could fuck right off because they _needed_ this.

They could claim this as a _personal_ experiment later, not that Ashley would believe them then, cause she certainly didn’t now. The two of them could sense her exasperation and unsurprised acceptance amidst her own want and desperation just as clearly as she and Josh could feel the red-hot throbbing of Chris’s still bleeding arm. The long and deep gash burning hot and painful where Trager had caught him with the edge of his bone shears when he had tried to escape. His hands had been too shaky to firmly grasp the door knob—electing to try and break down the door by force instead—and his reflexes too slow to try and fully evade the blades in time.

Not that anyone would be able to guess that now. Thankfully, it had seemed that the closer the two of them had gotten, the more their own personal afflictions had faded. Chris couldn’t remember the last time his grip had been so firm as he held Josh as close as he was able, and Josh was dimly amused that the first thing he was doing with his now more mobile tongue was shoving it as far into Chris’s mouth as he could.

They felt like they could have stayed in that alcove for ages, hiding from other Variants who had become so lost and absorbed by the Engine’s touch that they would have been killed without a thought. The two of them slowly becoming reacquainted with a body that had once been as familiar to them as their own, that they had only been allowed to touch and remember in dreams, but they needed to move on.

_Need. Move. Please. Miss you. Please._

That was all that was needed. As closer to completion that Chris and Josh were feeling, they wouldn't be truly whole until Ashley was there with them. And she was still out there. Alone. And as fogged as ever. From her eyes, they could see the dark shapes of doorways and tossed bedframes as she scrambled through wreckage so frantically and desperately that they could feel the phantom stones and glass digging into the soles of their bare feet. The two of them reluctantly separated, and there was no denying the fact that despite having Josh next to him, Chris’s hands still shook as though going through withdrawals. Not that it would be far from the truth of course, not having Josh or Ashley in his life had definitely been akin to stopping an addiction cold turkey.

“Well, let’s get a move on, hey Cochise?” Despite the ease of the lopsided smile on his face, the voice that came out was raw with disuse and the words felt fat and wrong on his tongue. “Don’t wanna run in to Big Debbie now do we?”

If Chris Walker wanted to kill them like he had everyone else so far—heads ripped off their bodies as easily as popping the top of a dandelion from its stem—then he could goddamn wait until they met back up with Ash.

They had been apart for five months, three weeks, and six days. They refused to add on even one more day. They refused to add on one more week.

They refused to make it six months.


End file.
